Word: balladeers
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SIDES One and Two were clearly conceived as a rock side and a ballad side, respectively. Three of the cuts on the first side are pedestrian rock songs that are nearly indistinguishable from each other. The standouts are "Shake Your Hips," a Slim Harpo tune that the Stones do in a version a little slower than, (but otherwise identical to) the original; and "Tumbling Dice," the single, which is nice enough but hardly up to the standard of most Stones 45s. Jagger's voice is mixed down so low on this whole side that the lyrics are completely unintelligible...
...whole lot better and bears an uncomfortable resemblance to "Come Together." "Just Wanna See His Face" is an exceedingly weird quasi-spiritual and one of the most distinctive and memorable cuts on the album. The side closes with "Let It Loose," the kind of hard rock ballad (sort of like "You Can't Always Get What You Want") that only the Stones can do really well; Nicky Hopkins repeats the same lovely piano part he used on Rod Stewart's "Handbags and Gladrags...
...LAST side is probably the best and most consistent. "All Down the Line," the opener, is the best of the rockers, and "Stop Breaking Down" is a good electric reworking of an old Robert Johnson blues. "Shine a Light" is a gospel oriented ballad with fine instrumental work from Billy Preston and Keith Richard. The final cut, "Soul Survivor," sounds like a cross between "Jigsaw Puzzle" and "Street Fighting...
Carmines' music is extravagantly eclectic. He writes songs about war, Joan of Arc, peace, Gertrude Stein, pornography, Jesus Christ and W.C. Fields, all in a stylistic gamut that runs from Monteverdi to Montenegro. His favorite form is an extension of the turn-of-the-century ballad, on which he imposes anything that catches his fancy: tangos, hillbilly hymns, blues, echoes, jazz, gospel shouts, Puccini pastiches...
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS of the concert included Merle Travis's "Deep River Blues," which gave Doc a chance to show off his finger-picking expertise. "He Had a Long Chain On," a ballad adapted from a Civil War legend, reemphasized his wide-ranging skills in vocal interpretation and the historical lines running through so much good country and bluegrass music. The Watson's duets on guitar and banjo were spectacular, as was Doc's classic, lightning-fast playing on "Black Mountain Rag." The flawlessly coordinated performances of father and son produced a sound rich enough to have emanated from half...